This paper investigates the pricing and restocking fee decisions of two competing firms selling horizontally differentiated products. We model a duopoly facing consumers who have heterogeneous tastes for the products and who must experience a product before knowing how well it matches with their...

We study a channel relationship in which manufacturer(s) use independent sales representatives (rep firms), which employ salespeople to do the actual selling. We show that commission-only payments by manufacturers to rep firms lead to suboptimal outcomes for the manufacturer relative to those...

In this research, we show that the interaction between territory allocation and sales force compensation—two key drivers of sales productivity—strongly affects the firm's profitability. We analyze an agency-theoretic model that jointly considers the degree of negative or positive correlation...

Consumers often return a product to a retailer because they learn after purchase that the product does not match as well with preferences as had been expected. This is a costly issue for retailers and manufacturers--in fact, it is estimated that the U.S. electronics industry alone spent $13.8...